Comparing average wages in the public sector with average wages in the private sector, as Harris does, conveniently hides the gross inequalities within each sector.
Why not instead compare the wage of a public sector janitor with a private sector banker. After all the janitor is doing something socially useful.

That’s a shocking piece from Harris, even by his standards. While his opinions are always completely off-the-wall, I can’t remember seeing a purported fact that’s as obviously simply and demonstrably false (deliberately lying?) as that figure for minimum public sector salaries.

The 2010 pay scales are correct. Civil service salaries haven’t changed since the cut (those scales are post-cut).

It’s also worth noting that while his claim that public servants will receive 1.5 times their annual salary on retirement, that applies only to those with 40 years service (including 40 years pension contributions). Less than that, and the lump sum (and annual pension) are paid at a reduced rate.

Of course Harris would never lobby to improve the private sector worker’s pay etc , that might upset his paymasters the 1%, and with redundancy lurking at INM its probably a case of the “empty vessel that makes the most noise” in support of the 1% agenda is the “empty vessel” that gets to keep his job!

I read the paper edition this morning and there was an amusing piece about Senator John Whelan (Lab.) apparently feeling defamed because some ICTU functionary had taken Whelan to task for his criticism of Eugene McGloone’s call for a general strike which everyone in a leadership position in the trade union movement is insisting is not and never was a call for a general strike. Whelan apparently being dead set against any such idea – I think he is also dead set against legislation for the X case, if my memory serves.

The guy’s some neck. Speaks volumes about the desperation of Labour that this guy was actively headhunted for a general election and that when rejected by the electorate he was then parachuted into the Senate. He doesn’t seem all too aware of what party he is in.

I think it was that Whelan claimed to have felt threatened when he was asked to withdraw an inaccurate comment that he made (which the ICTU guy also claimed was defamatory). Whelan then gets all precious banging on about his freedom of speech like some kind of politics.ie headbanger, while repeating the original inaccuracy (it wasn’t a call for a general strike).

That was it. I couldn’t get my head round it at the time and it struck me as a real ‘mountain out of a molehill’ thing. The headline above the piece, if I recall correctly, was along the lines of ‘Senator intimidated by union’ or something like that.

I see that the Sindo claims that Aodhain O’Riordain warned a Labour Parliamentary Party meeting that if Labour “pushes too hard to get more legislation” on abortion FG “might look for a deal from us in another area”?